Welcome to our kitchen that truly is the heart of our home! One of life's greatest pleasures is enjoying good food with family and friends. Here you will find recipes, tips for frugal cooking, how-tos for food preservation especially canning and anything else food related. Tea is brewing and warm cookies are fresh from the oven. Please sit a spell and enjoy your stay.

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I am a wife, mother and grandma who enjoys the many aspects of homemaking. A variety of interests and hobbies combined with travel keep me active. They reflect the importance of family, friends, home and good food.

Sticky Post - Warning: 4ever Recap reusable canning lids. The reports are growing daily of these lids losing their seal during storage. Some have lost their entire season's worth of canning to these seal failures!

Monday, March 03, 2008

There has been a lot of talk about the cost of bread rising and sadly that is true. Not only has the price of wheat increasing costs of other ingredients, transportation and labour costs are driving the increase. According to one Canadian source, the price of bread will be increasing by 25 to 30 percent. While the price of flour will also increase it will still be possible to save money by making your own breads. However, saving money is just a nice little bonus when making your own breads. The mouth watering aroma of homemade bread baking is one of life's simple pleasures.

I baked twelve grain and basic white bread today. Multi-grain bread like twelve grain are denser, lower rising loaves but they high in nutrition and fiber as well as being quite filling. Making wholesome and healthy breads is quite easy when you use a pre-mixed multi-grain flour. It eliminates all the measuring of various grains and flours. I use two pre-mixed organic multi-grain flours for breadmaking, 7 grain and 12 grain. The twelve grain flour used in this recipe consists of hard whole wheat flour, whole spelt flour, kamut flour, granola oats, ground brown flax seeds, quinoa seed, amaranth seed, barley flour, whole rye flour, dark buckwheat flour, hulled sunflower seeds and hemp seeds.

Mix dry ingredients together on speed 1 of KitchenAid® stand mixer. Mix oil and milk together then slowly pour into dry ingredients while mixing on speed 2 until well mixed. Cover and let rest 15 minutes. Knead on speed 2 until dough is smooth and elastic. Cover and let rise until double in a warm area. Shape into loaf. Place on baking sheet or in loaf pan. Cover and allow to rise until double. Bake at 390ºF (200ºC) for 25 to 35 minutes or until golden brown and loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.